Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/709

THE EMPIRE AND RESTORATION.] F K A N C E 673 perhaps above both in the literary finish of his maxims, and certainly above Vauvenargues in the breadth and depth of thought which they exhibit. Of science and erudition the time was fruitful. At an early period of it appeared the remarkable work of Cabanis (1757-1808), the Rapports du Physique et du Morale de CHomme, a work in which physi ology is treated from the extreme materialist point of view, but with all the liveliness and literary excellence of the Philosopho movement at its best. Another physiological work of great merit at this period was the Traite de la Vic el de la Mort of Bichat, and the example set by these works was widely followed; while in other branches of science La place, Lagrange, Hauy, Berthollet, kc., produced contri butions of the highest value. From the literary point of view, however, the chief interest of this time is centred in two individual names, those of Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael, and three literary developments of a more or less novel character, which were all of the highest importance in shaping the course which French literature has taken since 1824. One of these developments was the reactionary movement of De Maistre and De Bonald, which in its turn largely influenced Chateaubriand, then Lamennais and Moutalembert, and has been recently re presented in French literature in different guises, chiefly by M. Louis Veuillot and Mgr Dupanloup. The second and third, closely connected, were the immense advances made by parliamentary eloquence and by political writing, the latter of which, by the hand of Paul Louis Courier (1773-1825), contributed for the first time an undoubted masterpiece to French literature. The influence of the two combined has since raised journalism to even a greater pitch of power in France than in any other country. It is in the development of these new openings for litera ture, and in the cast and complexion which they gave to its matter, that the real literary importance of the Revolutionary period consists; just as it is in the new elements which they supplied for the treatment of such subjects that the literary value of the authors of Rene and De I Allemayne mainly lies. We have already alluded to some of the beginnings of periodical and journalistic letters in France. For some time, in the hands of Bayle, Basnage, Des Maizeaux, Jurieu, Leclerc, periodical literature con sisted mainly of a series, more or less disconnected, of pamphlets, with occasional extracts from forthcoming works, critical adversaria, and the like. Of a more regular kind were the often-mentioned Journal de Trevoux and Mercttre de France, and later the Annee Litteraire of Freron and the like. The Correspondence of Grimm also, as we have pointed out, bore considerable resemblance to a modern monthly review, though it was addressed to a very few persons. Of political news there was, under a despotism, naturally very little. 1789, however, saw a vast change in this respect. An enormous efflorescence of periodical litera ture at once took place, and a few of the numerous journals founded in that year or soon afterwards survived for. a considerable time. A whole class of authors arose who pretended to be nothing more than journalists, while many writers distinguished for more solid contributions to litera ture took part in the movement, and not a few active politicians contributed. Thus to the original staff of the Moniteur, or, as it was at first called, La Gazette Rationale, Laharpe, Lacretelle, Andrieux, Garat, and Ginguene were attached. Among the writers of the Journal de Paris Andre Chenier had been ranked. Fontanes contributed to many royalist and moderate journals. Guizot and Morellet, representatives respectively of the 19th and the 18th cen tury, shared in the Nouvelles Politiques, while Bertin Fiev6e and Geoffroy contributed to the Journal de V Empire, after- , wards turned into the still existing Joiimal des Dcbats. Of active politicians Marat (L Ami da Penple), Mirabeau (Courier de Provence), Barere (Journal des Debals et des Decrets), Brissot (Patriote Fran^ais), H6bert (Perc Du- clicsne), Robespierre (Defenseur de la Constitution), and Tallien (La Sentinelle) were the most remarkable who had an intimate connexion with journalism. On the other hand, the type of the journalist pure and simple is Camille Desmoulins (1759-1794), one of the most brilliant, in a literary point of view, of the short-lived celebrities of the time. Of the same class were Pelletier, Durozoy, Loustalot, lloyou. As the immediate daily interest in politics drooped, there were formed periodicals of a partly political and partly literary character. Such had been the Decade Philo- sophique, which counted Cabanis, Chenier, and De Tracy among its contributors, and this was followed by the Revue Franchise at a later period, which was in its turn succeeded by the Revue des deux Mondes. On the other hand, parlia mentary eloquence was even more important than journalism during the early period of the Revolution. Mirabeau nat urally stands at the head of orators of this class, and next to him may be ranked the well-known names of Malouet and Meunier among constitutionalists ; of Robespierre, Marat, and Danton, the triumvirs of the Mountain ; of Maury, Cazales, and the Vicomte de Mirabeau, among the royalists ; and above all of the Girondist speakers Barnave, Vergniaud, and Lanjuinais. The last-named survived to take part in the revival of parliamentary discussion after the Restoration. But the permanent contributions to French literature of this period of voluminous eloquence are, as frequently happens in such cases, by no means large. The union of the journalist and the parliamentary spirit pro duced, however, in Paul Louis Courier a master of style. Courier. Courier spent the greater part of his life, tragically cut short, in translating the classics and studying the older writers of France, in which study he learnt thoroughly to despise the pseudo-classicism of the 18th century. It was not till he was past forty that he took to political writing, and the style of his pamphlets, and their wonderful irony and vigour, at once placed them on the level of the very best things of the kind. Along with Courier should be mentioned Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), who, though partly a ro mance writer and partly a philosophical author, was mainly a politician and an orator, besides being fertile in articles and pamphlets. Lamennais like Lamartine will best be dealt with later, and the same may be said of Beranger; but Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael must be noticed here. The former represents, in the influence which changed the literature of the 18th century into the literature of the 19th, the vague spirit of unrest and " Weltschmerz," the affec tion for the picturesque qualities of nature, the religious spirit occasionally turning into mysticism, and the respect sure to become more and more definite and appreciative for antiquity. He gives in short the romantic and conservative element. Madame de Stael, on the other hand, as became Madame a daughter of Necker, retained a great deal of the Philo- <le Stael. sophe character and the traditions of the 18th century, especially its liberalism, its sensibilite, and its thirst for general information ; to which, however, she added a cosmo politan spirit, and a readiness to introduce into France the literary and social, as well as the political and philosophical, peculiarities of other countries to which the 18th century, in France at least, had been a stranger, and which Chateau briand himself, notwithstanding his excursions into English literature, had been very far from feeling. She therefore contributed to the positive and liberal side of the future movement. Both of these remarkable persons have in their works a certain taint of what it is difficult to call by any other name than insincerity, though it is certain that there was in their case nothing consciously insincere. The 18th century, however, had left a tradition of " posing " in French literature from which these writers, two of its most IX. 8?